Von Mises' Frequentist Approach to Probability
Milo Schield, Tom Burnham, Richard v. Mises · 2008
Richard Von Mises (1883-1953), the originator of the birthday problem, viewed statistics and probability theory as a science that deals with and is based on real objects rather than as a branch of mathematics that simply postulates relationships from which conclusions are derived. In this context, he formulated a strict Frequentist approach to probability. This approach is limited to observations where there are sufficient reasons to project future stability – to believe that the relative frequency of the observed attributes would tend to a fixed limit if the observations were continued indefinitely by sampling from a collective. This approach is reviewed. Some suggestions are made for statistical education. 1. Richard von Mises Richard von Mises (1883-1953) may not be well-known by statistical educators even though in 1939 he first proposed a problem that is today widely-known as the birthday problem. 1 There are several reasons for this lack of recognition. First, he was educated in engineering and worked in that area for his first 30 years. Second, he published primarily in German. Third, his works in statistics focused more on theoretical foundations. Finally, his inductive approach to deriving the basic operations of probability is very different from the postulate-and-derive approach normally taught in introductory statistics. See Frank (1954) and Studies in